Journey to Florida

Last night my family and I collected ourselves together around midnight to venture forth our 12 hour journey driving trip to Florida. It happens to be for my oldest cousin's wedding but I am just happy to be able to hit the beach and explore new areas, as always :)

Although this drive is very tedious, it is one of the easiest drives you could imagine. Interstate 75 is one of the main arteries connecting the midwest to the south and with it running straight through Cincinnati, we have followed the highway all the way to the border of Florida, where we are now. And we could continue all the way to Miami. The American highway system is one of the most beautiful things to me. If you have a good pair of wheels, you can get yourself into any corner of these glorious states.

Following this same highway, you can witness the types of trees change like a gradient scale. The new GPS navigator echoes through the morning rain as we hit the weird tropical type thunderstorms that only last a few minutes at a time. My phone has provided maximum entertainment in the dull moments inbetween uncomfortable sleep and long fields of flat, plain countryside. And as achy, antsy, impatient, and curious I feel... I absolutely adore long drives like this. Pushing yourself through the night just for that extra bit of fun time in your destination. Its almost like the journey is more fun that way too. And more appreciated.

It makes me realize that one of these days, I need to go on a massive roadtrip somewhere. Maybe do something like Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman did on motorcycles in Long Way Round. Kudos to those guys hardcore. I love them <3

-Brooke

NEWS: Art on the Levee

Ok, so I'm super stoked to announce that I set up a gallery feature wall downtown in Newport's Art on the Levee! The plan goes that I'll be there for the next 3 months and I'll be able to sell prints to anyone that wants to purchase during the busiest months of the year for the gallery :) Honestly, even if no profit ends up being made, I'm happy to have just a little bit more recognition and the fact the Gallery was excited to feature my work. For all you Cincinnatians/Newportians/Kentuckians/Ohioians check it out anytime! You'll not only love to see local art in the Gallery but Newport is an amazing place to visit (one of my favorites to visit on a monthly basis).

Speaking of how amazing Newport is.... you'll always get a fantastic view of Cincinnati.


My family and I headed down to Newport to check out my wall together to see it all completely finished on Friday night. Afterwards, we walked all around downtown Newport after a brutle storm passed to get a few shots of the skyline. I've taken quite a few photos of the skyline and it seems every time I do, it always looks a little different.

And before reading anymore of this long-ended description, let me say this is the most Epic sight I was ever granted to witness. Nothing short of a m a z i n g.

Absolutely extraordinary. There was a storm moving in with a cold front from the Kentucky side. The hardest part of the rain had already passed and we were in the last part of the storm. But lightning was still going strong and it was sketching across the sky in patterns I've only ever seen in movies. I tried to get pictures but they failed miserably D: With the sun setting, it perfectly lined up behind the city and it made it look like it was on fire. In a way, it looked straight out of an apocalyptic movie. And in saying so, I felt nothing but excitement walking around through it. The rain chased all the weekend rushers away, too, so it was like the place was all to myself. Which is always one of my favorites things to experience. I got to explore the weekend's Italian Festival where a lot of booths were trying to sell me a lot of stuff I didn't want lol. But, the carnival rides added quite an atmosphere to the storming chaos. It felt like I was eating cotton candy during a zombie apocalypse where the zombies were completely unaware of the fact I was even there. The delightful colors were magnificent to look at through the raging sky and then you'd hear the carnies stumbling around out of sheer boredom wanting to kick Mother Nature in the face for chasing away all their Friday night customers.





It was pretty amazing.




Also, something random, I adore this song by Amy Macdonald. I've been listening to it all night.

"He felt he could forgive anything to anyone because happiness was the greatest agent of purification."



"--these were the things that had come to white heat, had melted and fused within him, and their alloy was a stranger, quiet feeling that made him smile at the countryside in the darkness and he wondered why happiness could hurt."

-Atlas Shrugged-

.::Brooke

Fear.

Ok, so this is a cry out to the world for me. Thrown in a little cheesy, overused dialogue but mixed with a viewpoint that has been plaguing my mind all week long. I have to get this out.

^Picture I drew inspired by Witchblade. Never run. Always fight.

I try to live life in the most unusual way possible. I take pride in knowing that I do things a little differently than the rest. And I have done so through my short years thus far. But the older I get, the more people I see accepting failure as their reality. That they will see nothing more than huge sums of debt..... chaotic relationships.... broken promises.... reliving the lifestyles of their parents that they grew up hating....

Instead, they seem to embrace only what they've known their entire life rather than setting forth on a new road and seeing what they can discover in the unknown ways of life. Why do so many people let fear consume them?

Why is it easier to put all your minds efforts into thinking about reasons you cant do something when you could be thinking about what you can do? Why is it considered easier to lurk in the shadows rather than standing in a beaming light? What is everyone so afraid of?

This is just like a lesson I learned when I was a kid. Whenever I saw a bug or insect of some kind, I used to get the heeby jeebies to an extreme level. I was always told that the little bugs were more scared of me than I was of it and I should never be afraid of anything of the sort. Well.... I kind of see life's problems like little bugs. Sure they look creepy, but they will always exist, and that's ok. Just try to accept their existence and realize that without them, life on this planet would be soooo different. In my opinion it would be boring. Tedious. And predictably perfect. How would adventure ever be allowed? What about spontaneity? To me, living life to its fullest is by doing. And by these doings we develop character. Character makes or breaks us and everyone has the ability to make it. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

Follow your dreams. Give wings to your ideas. Take flight into the life you always dreamed of. Live with strong curiosity and don't let fear be the wind in your sails. Let passion, love, and curiosity be your driving force through every decision you make. Then, you'd be amazed at how much you'll find out about yourself, where you can go, and what you'll accomplish.

Be true to yourself and always welcome change... but never be changed.

Lauren & Chris

So the lovely couple, Lauren and Chris, got in touch with me back in the winter time and booked a photoshoot for May 29th for some engagement photos. They were such a wonderful couple to work with!! Not to mention they were so easy-going, fun, absolutely stunning people, and arrived ON TIME they were totally open to any and all of my ideas to what I wanted them to do in their 2 hour session and made my job really easy : ) And then, Mother Nature was good to me and stopped PSM-ing throwing tornado weather around at me. So *curtsey* to Mother Nature.


So anyways, here are some of my favorites :)





Congrats once again to Lauren & Chris and thank you sooooo very much for letting me be the photographer for your engagement :)! I feel honored.

-Brooke

The Good. The Bad. The Ugly.

.262. a video by Brooke Townsend on Flickr.

I played director today and Paul was my actor : ) Man, it's amazing what things we find ourselves doing when we have a week off and nothing planned to do...! We decided to have some fun with the new gun we purchased on Thursday. A .357 Ruger Blackhawk. Haven't actually fired it yet... but it really is pretty to look at... : ) And to catch Paul playing Clint Eastwood around the corner...

**Walks around corner
**GUN POINTED**

"AHHH PAUL WTHLKAJDGKJ?!?!"

[insert edited dialogue here] "This is a .357 magnum. The most powerful hand gun in the world. A single bullet will blow your head clean off. Now you gotta ask yourself a question... now do you feel lucky... PUNK!??!"

LONG POST - Updates :)!

I've been enjoying this week off so far catching up with stuff here at home, exploring the city, and getting stuff done that needs to be. And the following post isn't really for anyone to read particularly but really as a means for me to organize my thoughts and get together all that I have done this week :) So venting to myself now commences...

Saturday - I worked 9-5 and when I got off work, I went home and with all of Paul's family being here, it was my brother-in-law's birthday and also him and my sister-in-law's 2nd wedding anniversary : ) Paul's parents treated us all to Chik-Fil-A for dinner and we all went over to my parents house for cake, ice cream, and hung around for a while. Then we left around 9:30, got home, and I was NOT ready to let the day end. I talked to my parents and they were totally down for a late night movie to have the chance to see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides where me and Paul left the house after his family went to bed to meet up with mine to see the movie around 11:30. My mom treated us to popcorn & soda (which she NEVERRRR does..!!) and we saw what I thought was the best addition to the pirates collection. Didn't get home until about 3am. Had to sneak back into our own house lol!

Sunday - First official day I had off. I made a big breakfast for everyone and let me tell you cooking for 6 people is a lot harder than 2..! Then we kind of split ourselves into two groups. The boys went to Target World to get some shooting practice in. Us girls hit the mall and did some afternoon shopping with a very noisy baby in the stroller lol Little Callum I think would have preferred to be at the shooting range. Buuuut I don't think a 1 year old should be around open fire hahaha. When we got home I started making dinner which was my specialty, Swiss Chicken. I loooove making it. It's so delicious. All of my favorite things are in the ingredients (chicken, wine, butter, creamy deliciousness, topped with crunchy stuffing mix) and I was happy that everyone loved it.

Monday - I had the idea to take everyone to the local root beer stand that is famous in Hamilton called Jolly's. It has quite the old timey feel to it because when you go here, it's not the classic dine-in style. You just drive your car up to a spot of your choice with a menu that can be read from the driver's seat and where you can order right from your car :) There's a fast food chain now that you can find pretty much anywhere here that has the same idea called Sonic but Jolly's is better in my opinion. But it's probably because I grew up here. So anyways, we all had Jolly's in our cars and then headed to the park to play on the playground with Callum and enjoy the summer sun. It was the hottest day of the year that day at almost 90 degrees. Insanity. But we finally got a Townsend Family photograph together which is the first time ever! I was happy. That night though we had the most horrible weather blow in. Tornado sirens were going off. Wind broke our front yard tree in two. And debris was flying everywhere. It was pretty much the most exciting event of the DAY. It was amazing :D After it blew past we turned on the weather channel and learned about the horrible happenings in Joplin, Missouri :( The storm that came across our way was the same storm that hit that town.



Tuesday - Paul's family left around noon to head back down to North Carolina and Paul and I ended up getting Chinese for lunch at a new place we hadn't tried yet. Then did a bunch of random shopping all day where we discovered a nature shop, the African market shop, clothes stores, and walked around the empty and dead mall Cincinnati Mills. Later that evening we took a late night motorcycle ride and went all over the countryside driving a total of about 40 miles. It was so relaxing.


Wednesday - Paul and I woke up with the need to explore downtown Cincinnati :)! So we did. Packed the car up and went. We mainly just walked around EVERYWHERE and although I forgot to bring the battery for my 50D (do'h!) I did however have my little Olympus camera and I did take a lot of pictures. Seen below. That night though the worst of the storms rolled in..! At midnight, huge gusts of wind started blowing in and it sounded like there was a war happening outside. Hail, winds, and hard rain started beating down and me and Paul just watched it from our bedroom window. Lighting was crazy. I felt the need to run outside and protect my car somehow. But it would probably be a lot more damaged if I started to lay on it lol. It lasted probably about an hour and funny thing is, I fell asleep during it.






I would love to have a studio location that looks like this someday:








The Art Museum of Cincinnati: Home place of the most amazing staircase in Cincinnati



This was the one piece of art from the entire collection at the museum that really impacted me and stood out to me the most. I loooove it. I wish I would have gotten the name of the artist in the picture though :(







Thursday - Everything was a mess outside due to the storm. Trees uprooted. The sidings on houses completely ripped away. A car port behind our house completely toppled over. Check this out and you'll be able to see what some of it looks like. After doing a look around our neighborhood, we had to head Tri-County to meet up with a friend of mine and talk about doing their wedding photos this fall. I'm pretty sure they're wanting to book with me too :) Then, Paul and I headed to Target World to do some looking around and ended up purchasing a new gun with money he's been saving this entire year. ((((It's a Ruger Blackhawk .357 magnum revolver. Kind of has that old western feel to it. Quite nice actually. Pretty stoked to be able to fire it here soon. It'll be the next biggest bullet that I'll have fired other than a shotgun. I've fired a .22 and also a 9mm before and so far 9mm is my favorite. .357 is supposed to have a little more of a kick so hopefully it won't be too bad :/)))) So, we did some more shopping at a nearby computer geek's paradise called Micro Center. Then headed to the craft store for some new canvases (been completely out!) then in between the very heavy rain storms headed back home. It was the most relaxing day so far. The rest of the evening I spent playing Kingdom Hearts, watching tv, and playing with my phone.

Today... well no plans! And I like it that way. I was going to head down to Louisville for a wine tasting party I was invited to but I told them I wasn't going to make it because since we're heading down to Louisville anyways tomorrow as well for Memorial Day weekend, I thought I might as well save money in gas and hitch a ride with my parents down there instead.

But after Saturday I'll have 2 more days left of my vacation. Sunday I have a photoshoot planned and Monday I might be having another. We'll see!

I'm going to stop ranting now.

Brooke